{"id":2078,"date":"2012-12-29T20:52:57","date_gmt":"2012-12-30T00:52:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/?p=2078"},"modified":"2012-12-29T20:52:57","modified_gmt":"2012-12-30T00:52:57","slug":"why-good-people-need-semiautomatic-firearms-and-high-capacity-magazines-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/why-good-people-need-semiautomatic-firearms-and-high-capacity-magazines-part-i\/","title":{"rendered":"WHY GOOD PEOPLE NEED SEMIAUTOMATIC FIREARMS AND \u201cHIGH CAPACITY\u201d MAGAZINES \u2026 Part I"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re reading this, you\u2019ve probably had a conversation with someone in the last few days who asked, \u201cWhy do ordinary law-abiding people need those semiautomatic firearms with magazines that can hold more than ten cartridges?\u201d\u00a0 There are lots of sound answers.<\/p>\n

For one thing, defensive firearms are meant to be \u201cequalizers,\u201d force multipliers that can allow one good person to defend against multiple evil people.\u00a0 To allow one good person to defend against a single evil person so much stronger and\/or bigger and\/or more violent than he or she, that the attacker\u2019s potentially lethal assault can be stopped.\u00a0 History shows that it often takes many gunshots to stop even a single determined aggressor. Most police officers have seen the famous autopsy photo in the cops-only text book \u201cStreet Survival\u201d of the armed robber who soaked up 33 police 9mm bullets before he stopped trying to kill the officers.\u00a0 Consider Lance Thomas<\/a>, the Los Angeles area watch shop owner who was in many shootouts with multiple gang bangers<\/a> who tried to rob and murder him.\u00a0 He shot several of them, and discovered that it took so many hits to stop them that he placed multiple loaded handguns every few feet along his workbench.\u00a0 That\u2019s not possible in a home, or when lawfully carrying concealed on the street: a semiautomatic pistol with a substantial cartridge capacity makes much more sense for that defensive application.<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

\nSemiautomatic rifles? Consider this heart-breaking, fatal home invasion in Florida \u00a0http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Murders_of_Byrd_and_Melanie_Billings<\/a> and ask yourself if it might have turned out differently had the homeowners been able to access and competently deploy something like, oh, a Bushmaster AR15 with 30 round magazine.\u00a0 I teach every year in Southern Arizona, and each year I see more Americans along the border with AR15s and similar rifles in their ranch vehicles and even their regular cars.\u00a0 There have been cases where innocent ranchers and working cops alike have been jeopardized by multiple, heavily armed drug smugglers and human traffickers in desert fights far from police response and backup.\u00a0 A semiautomatic rifle with a substantial magazine capacity can be reassuring in such situations, as seen here: http:\/\/azstarnet.com\/news\/local\/border\/risk-of-violence-keeps-ranchers-on-alert\/article_adb7ca9a-14a3-5d63-8788-34bef7e77220.html<\/a><\/p>\n

In the last twenty years, we have seen epic mob violence in American streets. During the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, Korean storekeepers armed with AR15s kept their stores and livelihoods \u2013 and lives \u2013 from the torches of inflamed crowds because the mob feared their force multipliers. Read this, for a survivor\u2019s account: http:\/\/www.seraphicpress.com\/jew-without-a-gun\/<\/a>.\u00a0 There have been bands of roving, violent predators as lately as this year during the Sandy storm. And the \u201cflash mob violence\u201d phenomenon of recent years has left many urban dwellers picturing themselves as the lone victim of a feral human wolfpack.<\/p>\n

And, if you will, one more stark and simple thing:\u00a0 Americans have historically modeled their choices of home protection and personal defense handguns on what the cops carried.\u00a0 When the police carried .38 revolvers as a rule, the .38 caliber revolver was the single most popular choice among armed citizens.\u00a0 In the 1980s and into the 1990s, cops switched en masse <\/i>to semiautomatic pistols.\u00a0 So did the gun-buying public.\u00a0 Today, the most popular handgun among police seems to be the 16-shot, .40 caliber Glock semiautomatic.\u00a0 Not surprisingly, the general public has gone to pistols bracketing that caliber in power (9mm, .40, .45) with similar enthusiasm. The American police establishment has also largely switched from the 12 gauge shotgun which was also the traditional American home defense weapon, to the AR15 patrol rifle with 30-round magazine\u2026and, not surprisingly, the law-abiding citizenry has followed suit there, too.<\/p>\n

The reasoning is strikingly clear. The cops are the experts on the current criminal trends. If they have determined that a \u201chigh capacity\u201d semiautomatic pistol and a .223 semiautomatic rifle with 30-round magazines are the best firearms for them to use to protect people like me and my family, they are obviously the best things for us<\/span> <\/b>to use to protect ourselves and our families .<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re reading this, you\u2019ve probably had a conversation with someone in the last few days who asked, \u201cWhy do ordinary law-abiding people need those semiautomatic firearms with magazines that can hold more than ten cartridges?\u201d\u00a0 There are lots of sound answers. For one thing, defensive firearms are meant to be \u201cequalizers,\u201d force multipliers that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":6428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10,11,14],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2078","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-firearm-owners-civil-rights","8":"category-politics","9":"category-preparedness","10":"category-training"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}